Mark W Tiedemann

Month: January 2011

Schools

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I spotted this over at John Scalzi’s Whatever and it brought back some memories.

A woman in Ohio has received a felony conviction for deceptively sending her kids to a school in a district where she didn’t live.  Her father colluded in this.  The article linked doesn’t go into the reasons she did what she did, but I can imagine some of them, and it would have entirely to do with quality of school experience.

Fifty years ago, my schooling experience—and I phrase it that way because I’m talking about much more than just what you learn in the classroom; it’s a total package, going to socialization and self-image and the whole magilla that a lot of people condemning American public education, depending on their political slant, don’t want to think about—was in the process of being thoroughly fucked up. …

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A Little Bit About Writing

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I’ve been nattering on about politics and related matters for a while now.  It’s crazy-making because no matter how much sense you might make, or think you’re making, there are a lot of people who basically say “I don’t care, I want it my way!” and ignore everything else.

So I thought I’d talk about writing.

I’ve had a hell of a week in that regard.  Let me explain.

Many folks already know that I had a major (I thought) computer issue earlier this week.  It happened this way.  During the really cold months of winter, rather than turn on the space heater I have in my office, I move my writing upstairs, on a laptop. …

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Ahistorical Nonsense

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

Representative Michelle Bachman is the national voice of The Tea Party.  Recently, in speaking to a group of Iowans, she made some claims about American history that would be laughable if they had not come from someone who likes to style herself an authority of Constitutional matters.  She claimed that the glory of our country is that color and language didn’t matter, nor did class or parentage, that once people got here, “we were all the same.”

Wishful thinking at best.  Certainly that was the idea behind the Declaration of Independence, with its grand opening phrases, but like all such ambitions, it took reality a long, long time to catch up—and it still hasn’t. …

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Arrogance

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

We all use words sometimes in ways not intended.  We don’t, after all, have a dictionary to hand in every conversation and memory plays tricks, not to mention there is always some “drift” in common usage that’s culturally-driven.  Often it’s just sloppiness that becomes wired into daily use and when we go back to the dictionary it’s occasionally a surprise to find out that what we thought a word meant isn’t really what it means at all.

Sometimes, though, it’s the right word applied to the wrong circumstance or a label correctly remembered but used for the wrong reason.

Arrogance is one of the biggies. …

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Words Don’t Matter

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

The message being put forward, especially by the Right, in the aftermath of the shootings in Arizona, is that it is absurd to blame the rhetoric of violence and hatred for the actions of anyone, let alone Jared Lee Loughner.  Words don’t matter.  The man is a loon, his actions cannot be laid at the feet of anyone else.  Taken far enough, by this reasoning he acted in complete isolation from all influences.  Maybe so.

But really—words don’t matter?

In 1774, Goethe published his novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, a seminal work in the so-called Sturm und Drang movement. …

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Crazy Is As….

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but bear with me.  A bit of confessional time.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m an atheist.  To put it simply, I basically grew up and got over it.  Religion, to me, is historically and psychologically interesting, but does not represent any kind of reality.  The world, the universe, what have you, just doesn’t work that way, and for every example you can pull out of your hat of supposed “miracle” I can equal or better it with “shit happens” and just plain human synergy.  That anecdotal game can go on and on with neither side really running out of examples, leading no where, but just the fact that most miracles can be explained by mundane models suggests to me that the miracle is actually occurring inside the witnesses skulls. …

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Other Buzzzzzzzz

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I am not going to go see the new Green Hornet movie.  I knew that long before its release, when I heard Seth Rogen had been cast as the Hornet.  I just knew it would be a waste of everyone’s time, money, and sentiment.

I’m sorry.  Hollywood has been doing superhero movies now for decades and they’ve gotten a few of them pretty right.  Except for a ridiculous semi-musical romantic interlude, the first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve was fine.  Mostly this was due to Reeve and co-star Gene Hackman (who can save just about any movie), but they treated the material lovingly the whole way. …

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Challenge the B.S.

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

Let’s be clear:  no one should advocate censorship.

That said, we need to understand the power of language.  Images matter, words matter, what you say has an effect.  Every propagandist in history has grasped this essential truth.  Without oratory, Hitler and Goebbels would never have turned Germany into a killing machine.

The only antidote, however, is not less but more.  Not more propaganda, just more words, more images, more information.  More truth.

Ah, but, as the man said,  What is truth?

Sarah Palin, or her speech writers, has decided to play with that a bit and compare the criticism against her rather fevered rhetoric to the Blood Libel. …

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Taking Cues

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

I’d intended to give this a little more thought, but the events in Arizona have prompted a response now.

In the last post, I opined about the atmosphere in the country generated by overheated rhetoric and the irrationality that has resulted from seemingly intransigent positions.  Some of the responses I received to that were of the “well, both sides do it” variety (which is true to an extent, but I think beside the point) and the “you can’t legislate civility or impose censorship” stripe.

As it is developing, the young man who attempted to murder Representative Gifford—and succeeded in killing six others—appears to be not of sound mind. …

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If You Can’t Play Nicely With Your Toys…

Posted on by Mark Tiedemann

We finally have our Kennedy Moment in the current political climate.

Saturday, January 8th, 2011, is likely to go down as exactly that in the “Where were you when?” canon.  On that day, Jared Lee Loughner, age 22, went on a shooting rampage at a supermarket parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, killing six people and wounding eighteen others before bystanders tackled him.  (There may be a second man involved, police are searching for him.)

The rhetoric is already ramping up on both sides over this.  Loughner is a young man with, apparently, a history of mental difficulties.  What is interesting in all this is the suggestion that Sarah Palin is partly responsible. …

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